This Saturday, after six rounds of debates against teams from across the United Kingdom, I had the honour of speaking with a female friend in the Grand Final of the Glasgow University Union (GUU) Ancients debating competition on the motion that “This House Regrets The Centralisation of Religion”.

But during our speeches, we were booed, heckled with shouts of “Shame, woman”, and exposed to patronising sexual comments from a group of men in the audience, for the sole reason that we were women in dresses. When female judges sitting in the audience reported the incident to the GUU members organising the competition, they were begged to sit down and asked to “not cause trouble”.

Since then, my in-box has been inundated with messages from women coming from America, the Philippines, China, and Germany, telling me of their experiences with sexism at their university debating unions.

The misogyny we faced at the Glasgow University Union was extreme, but it is easy to see why these men felt like they were entitled to have their banter at the expense of the female speakers. When sexism is institutionalised it is hard to call out and even harder to fix.

The chair of the debate was the President of the Union and a man who “in a personal capacity” attends the annual all-male dinner meant to honour the 149 men who voted against a motion to allow women into the GUU. How can we be surprised that he did not silence his friends in the audience who booed Rebecca and I throughout our speeches and shouted “Shame, woman” when we spoke in the Grand Final?

When confronted after, the men heckling (a group which included an ex-President of the GUU) and current Board Members admitted that they booed us for being female speakers, but told us that the misogyny was “to be expected here” and “par for the course”.

What is concerning is the number of senior women within the Union explaining that the only way they could rise through the ranks was to accept it because “things will never change here, they are too powerful” and the number of women who said they chose not to debate in university because of the misogynistic culture of a Union that celebrates its sexist roots.

Marlena Valles participating in a debating competition

I have found university debating to be a safe and welcoming place filled with sharp minds and accepting beliefs, but sexism doesn’t exist within a void. While the sexism that Rebecca and I experienced was overt, the lad-culture that created it within the GUU, characterised by men treating women as lesser and then passing it off as “just jokes”, makes it even more difficult to challenge when women do speak up.

The outpouring of public support from the international debating community has been exceptional and truly makes me believe that debating unions and societies are committed to making their hobby as safe and accessible as possible. However, it is important that we think about the prejudices we hold and ask ourselves why so many young female debaters are told to make their voices deeper and more masculine and to defer to their male partners when speaking about complicated economics or international relations.

The idea that facts are for men and feelings are for women needs to be challenged vigorously, especially within ourselves.

Marlena Valles is a third year law undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh, and this year was named Best Speaker in Scotland at the Scottish National Debating Championships.